


Too Jaded for Oranges

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Golden Age Hollywood, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2018-12-21 13:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11945313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: Back home, the world is turning to dust, but here in the land of sunshine and oranges, Forsyth and Python are always on the verge of their big break. Golden Age of Hollywood AU aka what if the Deliverance were a movie studio?





	1. A Walk-On Part in the War

_The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They slaved and saved for nothing.-- Nathanael West_

Python is just about done with this war. The sky above him is ablaze with white heat. The wool of his jacket itches like a million bedbugs. He’s irritated as hell by the way his canteen bangs against his hip and he’s got a splinter in his index finger. Still he keeps marching, though his eyes are mostly on the tall infantry lancer marching two places ahead of him in line instead of on the great tower that makes an ominous silhouette on the horizon.

Forsyth looks like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. Discipline isn’t the best in this motley army of uniformed soldiers, plainclothes mercenaries, and vagabonds, but Forsyth is marching with his back straight and shoulders high like he’s drilled for this all of his life. He holds his spear like it’s something sacred. He smiles just a little whenever he looks toward their destination.

Python hopes some all-seeing eye catches Forsyth like this, the better to lift him out of the rabble and fulfill his dream at last, but that’s not how things work in this town. They march until the voice of some god from on high screams _cut_ and any semblance of order falls apart as the soldiers, mercenaries, and vagabonds dissolve into a horde of tired and hungry extras with fake weapons and itchy costumes and shooting on _Cold Goddess_ , or _The Tower of Guidance_ , wraps for the day.

Forsyth lowers his weapon a heartbeat or two after everyone else. He’s caught in the rapture of being part of something this big, and Python has to bring him out of it with an aggrieved “ _Come on_ , Fors.”

-x-

Forsyth probably would’ve hung around the backlots of Royal Productions all night if Python hadn’t made a fuss about it, but eventually they’re back in their street clothes and hot-footing it to their room at the Knights Inn, a joint whose fake stone façade and crenellations make it a suitable flophouse for a pair of pretend soldiers. Inside it’s not trying to be genteel and it’s not even very clean, but for the low price of the weekly rent, Python can put up with the mass-produced furniture out of a department store’s catalogue and the pervasive lemon odor of cleaning fluid. It’s not like he and Forsyth spend a lot of time in that room anyway.

Within a quarter of an hour they’ve cleaned up and are back on the road, hitching a streetcar down to Forsyth’s favorite soda fountain. Once they’re snug in their favorite table, Forsyth’s lips clamp tight on the blue paper straw of a double-thick malted while his eyes scan the sidewalks. He’s on the lookout for celebrities, whether A-list actors or the strange breed of people who are famous for being famous and serve no other apparent use to society. Python sips his lime phosphate and keeps his eyes on another kind of character on the pavement, the beings who, like himself and Forsyth, are neither natives of Tinseltown nor tourists.

Their clothes aren’t quite right— ill-cut, last year’s styles, some other brand of wrong. Their expressions aren’t the “oh wow” eagerness of the weekend visitor or the self-assured dreaminess of the people who imagine they belong here in the city of dreams. Sometimes they come in packs, like the mangy dogs that wandered the dusty streets of Python’s hometown, and their faces reflect a kind of hunger those stray dogs would recognize. Sometimes they walk alone. Some come in pairs, and when Python sees a twosome coming down the street, dead-eyed and past any amazement, he’s hoping he’s not looking into some future that belongs to him and Forsyth.

Tourists have a home waiting for them somewhere. The roaming dogs of Tinseltown have no home. They go back to a Knights Inn, or a cheap little house with stucco walls and a paper roof, or maybe a hotel suite if they’re a particularly well-fed stray.

Forsyth hasn’t lost his amazement. He takes his lips from the straw of his half-drunk malted to jostle Python and point out some minor star in the cinematic sky. Python agrees this high-stepping blonde must be the dame in question, but his own gaze keeps slipping back to a pair of lean men in cheap flashy clothes threading their way through the starry-eyed tourists. They’re people who’ve come to find glory in the land of sunshine and oranges and they haven’t found it yet. Probably never will. Right now they’re still trying, but at some day not far off…

And Python lets Forsyth distract him, because no way in hell is that some star of the first degree walking by their malt shop, and the argument over whether or not that was the legendary Mathilda walking a small yappy dog past the window keeps going well after their phosphate and malted are drunk and they’re back on the street.

-x-

Python throws himself down on the mail-order bed that looks extra ugly beneath the bare bulb of the ceiling fixture. When they get paid at the end of the week he’s going to be deliciously drunk when he falls into this bed, but right now he’s alarmingly sober and can hear every word as Forsyth practices the soliloquy he does every night, the one that impressed their high school drama teacher but is never going to make him a star in this town. Still, there’s something a little comforting, maybe, in the familiar rhythm of the words, and Python drops off to sleep to the sound of Forsyth declaiming the lines that no producer is ever going to ask him to say.

**To Be Continued**


	2. The Golden One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forsyth finally graduates to a speaking part as Python finds other ways of paying the rent, even as they move a little closer to the man at the center of the action, the silver screen's golden hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes, this is something of a Nathanael West pastiche, set in the equivalent of the mid-1930s. The dire situation at home and abroad will not be forgotten in ensuing chapters.

Python wakes to the tingling aroma of Forsyth squeezing orange juice for breakfast. They drink juice in the morning because oranges are cheap and the price of coffee went up last season and besides, Forsyth read in some magazine that coffee does thirteen bad things to the body, mind, and soul and hasn't touched it since. If Python were a more ambitious man he might kill for a cup of it some morning, but since he isn't, he drinks half the juice and then gnaws on the bitter orange rind for a little extra sustenance.

Then it's back to the studio. Today they have more of _Cold Goddess_ to film, but even if they weren't doing actual work they'd be hanging around in some capacity. They hang around Royal Productions specifically because it's the home studio of Clive, and as far as Forsyth is concerned Clive's the sun in his sky and maybe the rainbows too.

Everybody just calls him Clive, the inimitable, the one and only. The papers call him some other things, too. "Golden Knight of the Silver Screen" is one epithet Python's never been able to get out of his head, much as he'd like to. Clive first made his now-immortal name in a remake of the silent classic _The Four Riders_ , which then got a sequel called _The Sacred Medallion_ , which led to the series of films that’ll soon end in _Cold Goddess_. Of course, being from an old dynasty of stage actors he didn't exactly waltz into Tinseltown and blow everyone away by his native talent, but that's the inconvenient detail the papers hype up when they want movie stars to be some kind of aristocracy and play down when they want to sell the fantasy that stardom's there for the taking if only you try hard enough. Not that Clive doesn't have talent. Physically imposing enough to be the keystone of a war epic, affable enough to anchor a comedy, charming and sincere enough to carry a romance… there’s seemingly nothing he can’t do.

Nothing, that is, except genuinely move Python. Clive’s all right. Pretty good, actually. But Python doesn’t _get_ the way Forsyth and the rest of the damned world just adore the guy. The again, Python’s never really bought the fantasy that Tinseltown is selling. Movies are a means to an end and a damn good deal; that a couple of coins buys an escape for the afternoon-- two feature films, cartoons and newsreels, a sack of popcorn and the cold blast of air-conditioning-- is as miraculous as life gets these days. But that’s it. If Python had the money to while away his hours at a casino, or at a racetrack, he’d be there instead. Since he doesn’t, there’s always the latest picture show.

Forsyth lives and breathes it, and now he’s standing starstruck in the hallway with his prop spear in a white-knuckle grip because Clair just walked by trailing the fragrance of jasmine and orange blossom. Or MISS Clair, as the magazines have to call her. Forsyth's been following her since she was _Little_ Miss Clair with a head of bouncing gold ringlets and now she's passed within five feet of him, and his rigid pose doesn't relax until the click-click of her glittering heels carries Miss Clair out of sight.

-x-

Miss Clair is Clive's sister, because everything at Royal goes back to Clive somehow. Mathilda, the leggy blonde goddess who was definitely not walking a yappy dog past the soda fountain the evening before, is Clive's eternal fiancee. Or his secret bride. Python doesn't know which story is true and doesn't care. And Fernand, Clive's dear friend and frequent co-star, is the one causing a hold-up on the set of _Cold Goddess_ this morning because something isn't reaching his sky-high standards for lighting or costume design or extras not breathing in his direction or whatever the trouble is today.

Fernand's a throwback to the days before talkies took over. Every movement is exaggerated, from the scornful curl of his lips to the sharp gestures of his hands. His pale hair and flashing dark eyes look fine on a poster, where audiences could imagine the voice of their individual dreams coming from his lips instead of the downright unpleasant sound of his… whining. Python has to fight the urge to stick his fingers in his ears when Fernand starts in on his latest parade of complaints. Fernand has this upper-crust accent that's probably fake because Clive sure doesn't talk like that and everything he says is... stagey. Forsyth reciting his soliloquy in their room every night has nothing on each overwrought sentence that comes out of Fernand's mouth.

What he says isn't very enjoyable either, but as long as he makes Royal Productions money, Fernand's going to be in their hair... and Python isn't being paid enough to like it.

-x-

It takes a while for Forsyth to score another job with Royal after _Cold Goddess_ is in the can. They've enough to get by; Python has a journeyman's card for the carpenters' guild thanks to the constant pressure applied by his father and that means he can pay the rent while Forsyth hustles for his next opportunity in front of the camera. Working on sets isn't half-bad-- dangerous, sure, when stunts go wrong or scaffolding collapses or a panicked horse comes tearing through-- but he gets his ten hours in a day and there's overtime pay and he can put down his tools at the end of a shift and not have to think about it one second more until the next morning, which is Python's ideal kind of job. An extra playing in a "cast of thousands" can do that too, but Python's seen enough of actors by now to know a lot of them are always acting... and when actors become stars the way Clive and Miss Clair and Fernand are stars, they really never stop playing the star. It sounds like hell to Python and he wonders sometimes if Forsyth really does understand what he's aiming for. Python remembers every ounce of effort and every subtle transformation that turned his tall, earnest classmate into the Forsyth who spends every day auditioning for his big turn in the spotlight and he sure hopes Forsyth likes that persona, because if his dreams come true they're both going to be stuck with it.

After a couple of months Forsyth lands a bit part in the next epic of war and romance to come out of Royal Productions. Royal must have a lot tied up in horses, antique weapons, and fake castle walls because it's what they keep making again and again. _Cold Goddess_ made money the way they all make money but Python doesn't look forward to the latest edition of Young Hero with Magic Sword in Love and War any more than he would've wanted to see _Cold Goddess_ if they hadn't been in it. He's started throwing his coins at the flicks made by less reputable studios so he can unwind with a good heist movie or maybe something about pirates.

This one's called _The Spirit Maiden_ and the set involves a lot of fake trees. Royal's press release boasts that it's the largest indoor forest on the continent, but that's all puffery to make the prospective marks of the audience think it's real trees growing inside the studio. They're fake, and Python helped make a couple hundred of them. Meanwhile Forsyth's over the moon because he's got actual lines this time-- only two of them to voice, but that's two more than he’d ever had before. So Forsyth's got a speaking role and Python's job making fake trees gets him a bigger paycheck than what Forsyth brings home and they're both fine with that arrangement. If Python ever actually put money away instead of blowing it on a weekend spree, they could move out of the Knights Inn into some place that didn't have so many interesting stains on the carpet.

"I'm making connections," is how Python defends himself when Forsyth wants to know where the money's gone to again. "One of these days I'm going to hook up with the person we can hitch your star to and then we'll be golden."

And because he's right that he's just as likely to catch their big break in the back room of a bar as Forsyth is by practicing lines from some boring play they learned in high school, Python doesn't even care how much Forsyth yells at him for saying it. There's a lot of people busting ass in this town who'll never be stars even if they're better actors than _Mister_ Fernand and prettier than Mathilda. But if by hook or crook they can get in with the in crowd, then it's not just going to be plum roles coming Forsyth's way. Python imagines invitations rolling in to the right clubs and parties, or even better, invitations to things like exclusive showings of dirty movies— _imported_ dirty movies— in the plush confines of somebody’s mansion.

The premiere of _The Spirit Maiden_ is loud, mad, and stupid, and they have to wait through the same lines as everyone else to see it. From where they're standing Python can't even catch sight of the limousines rolling up in front of the theater or Clive the Golden Knight of the Silver Screen escorting his lady down the red carpet. The first reel is already playing by the time they get to their seats in the mezzanine and Forsyth's biting his nails because he's afraid they might've missed his first line of dialogue.

They haven't missed it. The scene comes and goes in a flicker but it stays with Python longer than it should because hell, that was _Forsyth_ up there, larger than life, his voice reaching every corner of the theater. He said that line pretty well, actually. Maybe all that practice had some kind of payoff.

He nudges Forsyth in the ribs.

"Hey. You're in pictures."

Forsyth is too overcome by his own existence to say anything back, but right now there might actually be some kind of movie-magic in his smile, here in the anonymity of the mezzanine with no cameras aimed his way.

**To Be Continued**


	3. New Morning Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Python and Forsyth at last find a patron... or, perhaps, an enabler. Or maybe it's stranger than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not file this under the tag "Everyone Is Gay" because *technically* everyone is not technically *gay*, but just about everyone is very not-straight IYKWIM. In case there was any doubt on that point.

Forsyth does not become the breakout star of _The Spirit Maiden_ on the basis of his two lines. That honor goes to a different unknown quantity from a different no-account town so far out in the “heartland” it's better described by less romantic names. This quantity by the name of Lukas has a face so pleasing it's almost pretty and he says his handful of lines with such conviction that the studio has him under contract before production even wraps on _The Spirit Maiden_. Instead of being jealous of the newcomer’s success, Forsyth is instantly in love with him. Clive's still the sun that Forsyth orbits but Lukas is, at least, a dazzling full moon added to Forsyth’s personal sky. Python doesn't object because Lukas was a real class act the time somebody (not Python) spilled coffee on him in the break room and it made a decent impression.

"We have to get in on _The Lionheart_ ," Forsyth says, because that's the next big star-studded spectacle in Royal's pipeline, and Lukas is set to be in it along with Clive and Miss Clair and the usual cavalcade of Royal's signature faces.

Everyone wants in on _The Lionheart_ , which isn't just billed as a sort-of successor to the money-spinner of _The Spirit Maiden_ , it's another remake of a beloved classic of the silent era. Python remembers being about ten years old and seeing the original in the one-screen theater in their town. His mother kept covering his eyes during scenes that Python at the time didn't begin to understand, and looking back on it now he's amused that stuff like that even went out in theaters for all to behold. Tinseltown's moral guardians wouldn't sanction any of that now-- hence remakes. Tried-and-true stories with all the scandalous parts sliced out and smoothed away and everybody lapping up the remains without knowing why they like it. Entertainment suitable for all ages. _Boring_. The moral guardians are a big part of why Python's dying for an invitation to one of these house parties where films from overseas get screened with all the outrageous and scandalous moments intact.

-x-

Forsyth gets into _The Lionheart_ \-- not in the sizable supporting role he'd auditioned for with his usual gusto, but in a role that's pretty much the same thing as he’d done in _The Spirit Maiden_ only with more lines. Forsyth hasn't quite gotten into his head that besides every other deficiency he brings to an audition-- no-name background, no fancy training, no connections-- he's got an "interesting" face. Get the lighting and the angle and his hair and the tilt of his chin just right and he'd look better on a magazine than Clive and Fernand put together. Get any of that wrong, and he's all forehead, or his chin seems too square, or he's too narrow across the cheekbones. People with interesting faces get what they're given in this town, unless they're already somebody, that is. Or they know somebody.

Forsyth, after all the months they’ve toiled here, still only really knows Python, and Python knows that he cleans up better than Forsyth can. More consistently anyway. Python would be happy to stay behind the scenes making fake trees or whatever else the studio wanted for ten hours a day but Forsyth arm-twists him into auditioning and so this time Python also ends up in front of the camera, not as one member of a vast array of extras like in _Cold Goddess_ but just off to the side of whoever’s in the spotlight, where someone back home might actually recognize him if they squinted. Thanks to this both of them end up in the thick of it on the very day that production on _The Lionheart_ unexpectedly shuts down

Forsyth and Python haven't had the honor of any scenes in Clive's vicinity yet-- he comes out of his dressing room to say hi to the minor players like a general giving a pep talk to the troops and for all Python knows Clive is knocking boots with the beauteous Mathilda whenever he’d not needed on the set. They've had plenty of scenes supporting Fernand, and one brief scene with Miss Clair, and have seen enough of Lukas that they might as well be stalking him. Lukas is supposed to be sharing his scenes with a veteran actor who's always gotten Python's hackles up because his face just looks like it deserves a punch and Python's seen him treating the extras, the riggers, and the makeup artist like crap when the cameras aren't on. Whenever this guy’s being filmed there's take after take and nobody gets to eat or use the bathroom on time. But he's a Name, and speaking ill of Names that are worth more than you are is a quick way to never eat lunch in this town again, so in order to protect the guilty Python's dubbed him Sir Upjump.

Upjump is worse than Fernand, or at least the ratio of talent to obnoxious is worse in Upjump's case, and today Upjump’s decided he's had enough of sharing the spotlight with Lukas. This would almost be justified if Upjump didn't have it coming. Lukas nails scenes in one take, and while his part as written in the shooting script isn't much more than the handful of lines that Forsyth's got, there's been rewrite after rewrite to expand his part because giving the lines to Lukas saves the studio film, time, and money. Some of these revisions are coming at the expense of Upjump and his character, and today, right after they come back from a very short and very late lunch, Upjump lets everyone from the director on down know what he thinks of this disrespect.

Python's seen both general disorder and organized strikes on the set before but never has witnessed a mutiny led by an _artist_. For all that he despises the instigator watching it unfold layer by layer is pretty entertaining, at least until he and Forsyth look to each other and realize they're the only ones left on the set.

Besides Lukas, that is. He’s standing in the middle of the scenery, hands clasped around his prop spear and a half-smile gracing his face.

"Shall we go out for a drink?" asks Lukas and he sounds unconcerned, even bright, like it's been a solid day's work and they've all earned that drink. 

"Sure," says Python, before Forsyth can protest that it's only one in the afternoon.

-x-

Lukas takes them to a watering hole at the better kind of hotel, where the bar boasts dark wood paneling and art-glass lamps instead of harsh lights and subway-station tile. Forsyth orders a double whisky like a sophisticated man, Python orders a beer like a bum, and Lukas orders a sugary, fruity drink that looks like it belongs in a showgirl's hand. The colorful drink with its pineapple spear, orchid, and curlicues of lime peel heightens a suspicion that Python already had about Lukas but he keeps it to himself for the time being-- Lukas simply might have terrible taste in drinks.

At first they don’t say much; Python’s not really sure what to say to Lukas about Sir Upjump or anyone else beyond confirming the rumors that Lukas had decked Upjump in the lot on day two or three of shooting. Forsyth just seems a little shaken by the whole mess, or by being one seat at the bar down from his newest idol, or both. Then Python says something (it’s the second beer, and he never remembers what it was after the fact), and Lukas responds with a fully-bloomed smile, and after that conversation jumps from topic to topic like so many drunken frogs. In spite of the succession of beers and cocktails Python notices the things they somehow avoid, the basics like “where’re you from?” and “what inspired you to get into the pictures?” and that sort of crap. Lukas knows their names already and he doesn’t have much of anything to say about himself, and so everything circles around the void where typical small talk would go, not that Python much cares.

Python has to upgrade his evaluation of Lukas. Lukas isn’t almost pretty. Up close he’s just beautiful, no “almost” about it. Unlike a lot of gingers he’s got dark eyelashes, so instead of a permanent look of surprise there's a keen look to his eyes even after three of those showgirl drinks. Python’s wondering if Lukas has a room at this hotel when Lukas says something to the effect that if they liked this particular bar, he could think of an even more pleasing one for next time.

As Lukas opens his wallet to pay their tab, Python and Forsyth exchange a glance behind his back, and Python knows that both of them are thinking the exact same thing.

_Score._

"I told you my level of commitment would garner us favorable attention."

"I told you the way to do it was hit the bar with the right person."

The argument lasts the entire streetcar ride and all the way back to their bedroom. They'll never settle it but they're both still grinning as they hit the hay for the night because both of them can tell in their gut that something is finally happening.

-x-

Shooting on _The Lionheart_ resumes-- without Upjump and some of his friends. Python assumes they've hit the almighty blacklist and thinks no more of them. The parts are recast and Lukas gets additional lines out of the revisions... as does Forsyth. As, for the first time in his life, does Python. They're just a couple of tossed-off things that sound like ad libs, and he's not even nervous while saying them, but it's something he never saw himself doing no matter how many times Forsyth dragged him along for an audition.

"I cannot believe how gracious he's being to us," says Forsyth, because after the fifth or sixth time that Lukas has deigned to entertain them, Tinseltown’s new darling suggests that perhaps Python and Forsyth might be more comfortable in the apartment above his garage than in their rented digs.

"Yeah, it's pretty weird. I'm guessing this guy isn't a serial killer, but who knows?" replies Python. "Nice place, though."

Lukas has an actual house-- a mansion, even, by some standards-- with picture-perfect views of orange groves and a glimpse of blue sea out the windows. He's got a glasshouse, a bowling alley, and a library with built-in shelves running from floor to ceiling. He's got a fountain in the front yard and a swimming pool in the back plus that two-room guest apartment over the spacious garage. All the furnishings are tasteful and impersonal and Python guesses the real-estate agent probably set the place up for Lukas before he moved in. But the offer means they can bid farewell to the Knights Inn with its grungy carpets and antiseptic hallways and Forsyth and Python don't have to think very long or hard before taking it.

-x-

Over dinner that first night at Chez Lukas or whatever the place oughta be called, their new best friend finally gives them a glimpse of the figurative cards he’s keeping close to his chest. As Python and Forsyth cut into a pair of really excellent steaks, Lukas hints that there’s more riding on _The Lionheart_ than either of them might imagine. He talks about Clive's belief that _The Lionheart_ (in which Clive of course plays the title role) is a can't-miss, a sure bet, a guaranteed smash and that the consequences are going to be enormous. Python knows there's no such thing as a sure bet and can remember some of the ballyhooed flops that he and Forsyth’ve walked out of, but since it’s a thrill to listen to Lukas he keeps on listening. There’s talk of leverage, of contract law, of new opportunities. There’s something shining right around the corner, and Clive has given Lukas one of the keys to paradise, and he’s willing to share with Python and Forsyth for no particular reason other than, Python guesses, they didn’t walk out during the mutiny. And he and Forsyth eat their steak and drink their wine and nod and then have some lime sorbet with rum sauce, because what the hell else are they going to do?

"Not bad," Python says of their first gilded sunset from the guest house. “Even if this is all definitely weird.”

Python's pretty smashed the first night he sleeps in his new bed… and the second, too. Lukas leaves good stuff out in a decanter where it's there for the taking. The third night, he's a little less flush with his host's generosity, and it's then he notices the quiet. It's not just that the walls aren't paper and there's no one below them except for a car that Lukas never drives. Forsyth isn't saying his lines. Forsyth is already asleep, tucked under the green satin coverlet with his head on a fresh feather pillow, dreaming of the good life that’s almost theirs for the taking.

Python never really thought he’d miss that familiar sound until it wasn’t there anymore.

_To Be Continued_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, the Hays Code or some variant thereof exists in this universe and the Tinseltown in which Python and Forsyth operate is much cleaner on the surface than it'd have been some years prior.


	4. The Rise of Deliverance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clive and his entourage unleash their new project on the world, and Forsyth and Python are along for the ride.

There’s a brown snake with black speckles sunning itself on a rock by the side of the pool. Python leaves it alone; the snake has as much a right to be enjoying the backyard at Chez Lukas as he does. The sky today is cloudless blue, the housekeeper’s set out a pitcher of water tarted up with lemon, lime, _and_ tangerine slices for his benefit, and there’s something that might be lunch waiting for him under a white napkin. Python lifts the napkin and finds two perfect halves of an alligator pear with salt and a rosette of mayonnaise on the side.

That’s not lunch where he comes from, but Python gives it a try. As he bites into creamy bland nothingness he hears water churning. Forsyth’s finally coming out of the pool. Python fishes some lime out of his drink to see if squeezing it over the alligator pear will make it taste like something and he watches Forsyth towel himself off, regretting yet again that nobody at Royal is ever going to see him like this, with his hair a mess and his body sunburned and not a single fillip of self-consciousness on display.

Forsyth’s his acquired “self” again by the time he joins Python at the little poolside table.

“Stop scratching your elbows in public,” says Forsyth. “People are coming over tonight and we can’t have your behavior reflecting poorly on Lukas.”

-x-

Lukas admits he’s lost some friends in the aftermath of the Upjump blacklisting debacle but he still can scrape together enough pals for a party on weekends, mostly other people from Royal who exist somewhere in between Python (an “under-5” as in “under five lines”) and a breakout star like Lukas himself. Clive and Mathilda breeze through and there are the golden couple holding court by the poolside, with Mathilda sitting in the very chair near the speckled snake’s favorite spot. Good little snakes are asleep at this hour and so nobody’s in danger, but Python’s got something extra to his own smile as he hands the goddess of cinema her cocktail and Mathilda notices.

She talks to him. Clive and Mathilda talk to them both, like they’re people who deserve respect for the work they’ve put into this town. Python remembers that long after the golden couple go elsewhere and the party dissolves into something chaotic enough Python could roll up his sleeves and scratch both elbows at once and not lower the dignity of the proceedings. Above it all is Lukas, standing on the top tier of his deck, hands behind his back, smiling a little at the tiny scene over which he’s the master.

“Come join us, Lukas!” cries a shapely red-head who’s splashing around in the pool in her evening finery, and Lukas just stands his ground and smiles.

-x-

If _The Lionheart_ ’s success didn’t matter like it does to some people, Python just might be hoping it’d land in theaters with a bellyflop, the better to kill off this endless parade of epic costume dramas. They keep a lot of people employed making sets and costumes and filling up the fake armies, so in that sense they’re doing something for the world, but as movies? No thanks. _The Lionheart_ is better than most in the sense it was based on something good to start with, but Python wishes somebody could dig up the original so he could watch it without Mother’s hands over his eyes.

 _The Lionheart_ is huge. Clive and his entourage could fill swimming pools with gold, wear gold, eat gold, smoke gold if they wanted to— and of course, the actors are only getting a fraction of what the studio rakes in as profit. Desaix and Slayde and the rest of the studio executives are probably are eating and smoking and crapping gold in their penthouses. The nicer hallways of some of the buildings at Royal get a new set of pictures on the wall, promotional stills from _The Lionheart_. There’s one of Lukas with Miss Clair where she looks like she’s contemplating ripping his throat out with her teeth and he looks like he’d be okay with that as long as she didn’t take too long about it. There’s another of Fernand having a big dramatic scene with Clive. There’s even one where Python’s sharp eyes can just make out a blurred outline of Forsyth in soft focus over somebody’s shoulder.

This turns out to be the highest honor Royal ever hands to Forsyth, because once awards season rolls around and _The Lionheart_ cleans up, the Big Thing that Lukas keeps hinting about comes to pass. One day, every publication in Tinseltown— the broadsheets that Lukas and Forsyth read, tabloids that Python reads, the trade publications, all of them— run the same photograph on the front page. Clive and Mathilda and Fernand and Miss Clair sit in their matching directors’ chairs, four riders of the Tinseltown apocalypse come to bring the world…

_Deliverance._

A new way of making motion pictures, one that gives autonomy and creative control to the actors like never before (and allows them a better cut of the profits, of course). A studio that’s not as bad as the rest, in essence. All this sounds mighty fine but what catches Python's interest is that for the first time ever in Tinseltown, actors are getting a guild like the carpenters and other tradesmen get, and Deliverance will be bound to contractual rules on how everyone's treated from the big names on the marquee down to the little kids tap-dancing with lollipops in their hand. No more working the kids until they faint or break down in tears… and Python has to wonder how much the former Little Miss Clair has to do with these reforms. All that's going to cost money, of course-- or at least that's the excuse from Royal and everyone else on not treating no-names like human beings-- but with Clive and Mathilda and Miss Clair and Fernand on board, Deliverance is certain to make money.

Or not. Python knows how the system works. Studios own theaters who are guaranteed to show their movies. But Deliverance doesn’t have any theaters of its own, not yet, so they’ve got to enter into what Lukas calls “licensing agreements,” which sound complicated. So. Deliverance doesn’t have theaters, Deliverance doesn’t have a lot the size of a small town filled with decades’ worth of sets and props and armies of workers, Deliverance doesn’t have any of the structure backing it up. Deliverance has stars, and ideas, and right now the stars have some money to spend, and that’s about it.

Lukas goes with the famous foursome to Deliverance, or to be truthful he goes with Clive, who's obviously taken a shine to him given that Lukas knew way too much about the whole Deliverance business before it hit the papers. He's got quite a few hits under his belt now, not just the mega-spectacles like the magic sword epics but some regular movies that don't involve waving a fake spear around. Python's even enjoyed a couple of them-- a war movie about an aviator and a detective story with a decent amount of suspense come to mind-- as movies, that is. He always enjoys watching Lukas.

Everyone does. The camera adores him and he has a voice made for the talkies, an intimate caress in the viewer's ear. Maybe his smallish figure wouldn't hold the audience in thrall on the stage of a “legitimate” theater the way Sir Mycen could in his heyday or the way Clive supposedly can even today (Python wouldn't know-- he can't afford tickets to these plays and wouldn't spend the money on Clive if he could afford it), but the magic of film captures every subtle flash of dry wit and low-key chuckle of self-deprecation. He can hold his own one-on-one against the supposed best of the best and anchor a scene that otherwise would spiral into chaos with no visible effort on his part. Lukas can almost do everything. Again, _almost_. It turns out flattering light and the sound of his voice can't quite cover up his one peculiar shortcoming as an actor.

That flaw gets showcased in his very first picture under the Deliverance banner, when Lukas plays opposite Miss Clair in another one of these ghastly period romances that Python's stopped being indifferent to as long as he's paid and now outright loathes.

"They do make an attractive sight," says Forsyth of the promo poster for _A Thousand Snows_ as they walk out of the theater, with Lukas and his burnished “auburn” hair and Clair and her golden curls glowing against the darkness.

"I dunno. Was it supposed to be disturbing? Because the whole time Lukas was romancing Miss Clair it sounded like he was making a catalogue in his head of how neatly each part of her would fit in the icebox once he was done cutting her up."

"There you go with this serial killer accusation again! I tell you, it's ludicrous."

"There's something weird there, Forsyth.”

They’re still living above his garage and benefiting from his _largesse_ towards them for reasons Python doesn’t fully understand. For certs they’ve been useful for him; for a company that claims to follow guild rules, Deliverance in its infancy has a lot of people voluntarily working under the table on things that don’t fit their job descriptions per any contract in anyone’s drawer. Python and Forsyth have forged signatures on promotional photographs, proofread documents for typographical errors, even looked over script submissions as a first line of defense between the promising and the garbage. Forsyth assumes that this is part of the arrangement, going above and beyond their supposed jobs in order to share in the upcoming glory. Python guesses it’s more that the new venture is understaffed and kind of sloppy but it’s reasonable to think it’s helping pay his rent, so he puts his abstract qualms aside and does it.

To their surprise, Lukas freely admits he didn't enjoy playing the romantic hero in _A Thousand Snows_ and would prefer to avoid such roles going forward. Deliverance, he says, needs to step away from its attempts to replicate everyone's successes at Royal Productions, the magic sword epics with nine hundred fake trees and the rest of it. Python can, and does, drink to that.

“Say, Luke, have you thought about making a heist movie?”

“I can’t say that I have,” replied Lukas, and the look he gives Python is what the papers call “inscrutable.”

"Yeah. Something clever. Maybe not a shoot-em-up like a bank robbery or a train robbery but some kind of espionage. A cool-headed criminal mastermind and his colorful henchmen. Wouldn't that be fun?”

“It might be,” says Lukas, and he’s a little more scrutable. He’s going to think about it— really think about it, because that’s what Lukas does, and not forget about it the second the conversation is over. 

Meanwhile _A Thousand Snows_ makes a pile of gold, gets flattering reviews, and pictures of Lukas and Miss Clair are splashed all over the gossip rags. Since it's common belief she's been stepping out with Fernand for years now, the real impact of _A Thousand Snows_ is a war between a faction of fans that "support" Clair with glamorous Fernand and a faction that'd rather see her with nice, sweet Lukas. Each faction has a magazine whipping up their passions and the fan mail and hate mail pour into the Deliverance mail department by the bushel. Python helps the mail girls sort through the rubbish from time to time when he's bored and he reads one letter wherein a fan of Lukas claims to've sat through _A Thousand Snows_ twelve times to show her support for his love with Clair. Then another letter from someone who watched the movie fourteen times. Then another who saw it sixteen times. They're not the same person.

Python brings the last of these abject letters home for Lukas to read with his own eyes.

"Stealing mail is a federal offense, Python," Lukas says without reading the letter.

"Some of your fans should be a federal offense."

If this is what's buttering the Deliverance bread, it makes him feel dirty. Then again, it’s giving the people what they want. An afternoon at the movie palace is still the best deal around, so if they’re going to watch any old junk to stay cool and fed, _A Thousand Snows_ isn’t the worst thing on offer.

-x-

Back at Chez Lukas the rainy season doesn’t come this year, either, and the spring-fed fountain in the yard dries to a trickle. At least they still have the swimming pool. Python hoped that proximity to both Lukas and a pool would catch him the sight of some finely sculpted ass, or at least solid viewing time of Lukas with his shirt off, but on this point he's been sorely disappointed. A thick dressing gown over silken pajamas is as indecent as Lukas ever gets within sight of his guests and Forsyth's been the only one using the pool. Forsyth’s already casting longing glances at the pool over breakfast that particular morning, while Python for his part is casting glances that are anything but longing at the oranges in the fruit basket. That’s about all that’s left in the grocery shelves now— no more apricots, no alligator pears, not even bananas. Just oranges every day and maybe a grapefruit to break up the monotony. Python can’t stomach another orange this morning so he just sips his coffee, which at least is hot as the sun and bitter as his own feelings toward most of the pile of scripts he spent the night reading. 

Lukas takes his coffee with so much cream and so much sugar it's like a cup of melted gelato and in his company Forsyth shuts the hell up about the thirteen evils of coffee and learns to take his the same way. Python drinks his black and it takes two cups before he trusts himself to put any words together regarding his night of under-the-table work.

"Here's something."

Lukas puts on his reading glasses, the ones their old studio wouldn't allow him to be photographed wearing, and as Python hands over the script he wonders how much of that famous "cool appraising stare" just comes down to bad vision at close range.

"Heist movie. Art thieves and forgery. There's no kissing and nobody dies.”

Also, it’s got laughs in it. There weren’t enough laughs at Royal and there aren’t enough now in the pipeline at Deliverance. There’s that old saying about bread and circuses, and right now the stores are running out of bread so somebody needs to step it up on providing the circus.

“This has merit,” says Lukas, and he takes it.

And Python spends the rest of the day lazing by the poolside, his conscience as clear as the sky.

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Alligator pears" are avocados, by the way.
> 
> So the idea for Deliverance the movie studio is inspired by the founding of United Artists in our world, though that happened much earlier during the silent era and they did indeed have their own theaters.
> 
> Lukas in reading glasses is inspired by lots of fan art. If you have drawn him that way, thank you.


	5. Blue Movies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Royal Productions strikes back against Deliverance and Python finally gets his exclusive screening of a racy foreign movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some period homophobia. It's a 1930s AU and the backlash has commenced.

Desaix over at Royal has changed his mind about letting Mathilda and Miss Clair flounce from their contracts and now these golden ladies are entangled in small-minded lawsuits and forbidden to appear in any pictures until the courts have their say. Lukas assures Python and Forsyth that Desaix has no merits to his claims and the courts will throw his suits out as frivolous, but in the meantime fighting off Royal is awfully expensive. 

With this sword looming over them all, Python and Forsyth begin work on the very heist picture that Python’s been advocating for. Either as reward or punishment he’s got a lot more than five lines this time— as many lines as Forsyth, which makes him a “supporting actor” by the rules of the new actors’ guild. It’s someplace Python never, ever, in a million years expected to be and it’s weird. He’d kind of expected he’d be building sets forever to fund his and Forsyth’s life in Tinseltown.

Lukas is directing as well as acting in the lead role of the “cool-headed criminal mastermind” (which is precisely what Python wanted, so no complaints there) and he’s tolerant, even encouraging, of not saying “cut” when Python says something that’s maybe not technically in the script. He also has an eye for catching Forsyth at his best, or at least that’s what Python thinks when they view the dailies. It looks like it’s shaping up as something good, which is probably the best news for Deliverance in a while. Without his leading ladies, Clive has to rely on Fernand, and Lukas, and former nobodies like Forsyth and Python to carry his pictures, which wasn’t really part of the master plan. Clive’s lost a little of his sparkle lately and Lukas has quietly made himself indispensable both onscreen and off at keeping their leader on track. Forsyth’s trying his best to do the same… though not quietly. 

Every day it seems like the papers are screaming that the fair ladies have been taken hostage by their brute of a former producer. Python skips over the breathless reports on the anguish the ladies are suffering with their careers held in limbo as the suits grind their way through the courts, because there's a nice sordid houseboat murder and a juicy divorce to read about. It could be all lies, but how’s he supposed to tell?

-x-

Lukas has been doing some renovations on the house, converting a pastel mess that was probably meant as a nursery suite into a little cozy theater. He says it’s so he can review the dailies in private, and for the most part that’s true, but on one sultry evening when Forsyth and Python are staring with blank faces at a mess of legal documents across the dining-room table, Lukas suggests they all unwind with a movie from overseas.

“Is it a dirty movie?” Python is dying to find out what kind of pornographic inclinations Lukas has because after all this time he hasn’t found any.

“By our standards, possibly. By their standards, not at all,” Lukas replies. “It’s their equivalent to _A Thousand Snows_.”

“Nope,” says Python.

“I think you’ll find this quite unlike your expectations,” says Lukas, and he screens it anyway.

“Are there subtitles?” Because the last thing Python wants to do is read his way through a movie.

“No, many of our friends overseas speak the same tongue as we do and you should have no problem comprehending them.”

So Python and Forsyth settle into the couch of the theater room while Lukas plays projectionist. The first thing on the screen is the unfamiliar logo of Lodestar Productions, a circle of five glowing gems set into a shield. Forsyth starts explaining the significance of Lodestar in the overseas market and Python jabs him in the ribs.

“We’re supposed to be enjoying this.”

Forsyth can’t keep from chattering through the credits as the names of big stars splash on their little screen.

“This is a Nyna movie! They call her the Empress of Cinema over there—”

“Shut up, Forsyth.”

Nyna’s got a torrent of gilded hair like Miss Clair but it only takes one scene to realize she’s on a whole different level than Miss Clair or Mathilda. Her queenly facade is thin as the crust of sugar on the rim of a cocktail glass and beneath it she’s tormented, desperate, wracked with longing. Her leading man hardly looks old enough to be in role of her lover but he confronts Nyna’s vortex of despair as gamely as anyone could. His bitter sense of humor is the one and only thing that recalls Lukas’s performance in the Deliverance version, because this tragic costume-party romance amid the fake snow resembles the movie Lukas and Miss Clair made only in outline. 

There’s blood. There’s a suicide attempt. There’s a lot of white roses and a metaphorical deflowering involving more blood and a dagger and a whole lot of crazy besides. Then there’s a real deflowering with bared tits and exposed legs and no doubt at all as to what’s going on. There are out-of-wedlock kids all over the place and there’s a severed head in a basket.

“Holy crap,” says Python as the credits play out at the end of eight reels of madness. “That was hot like a _house fire_. That would get everybody over here arrested just for being on the set.”

“Long years of war may have shaped the tastes of our friends across the sea,” says Lukas, who mostly seems amused by the fact that this thing even exists.

Forsyth looks stunned and he’s clutching a daiquiri like it’s a ward against evil.

Then Lukas tells them how much money the overseas version of _A Thousand Snows_ made, and Forsyth and Python look at one another with a shared expression of “Damn. We might be on the wrong continent.”

-x-

The heist movie makes some real money to keep things afloat. The premiere is an experience, because Python’s never been to one of those as a principal actor before. The red carpet’s never been rolled out for him before; the flashbulbs have never gone off on his face before. Forsyth actually practices for the premiere, putting on his best smile and walking down the carpet with the gait of a man who actually has practiced for this (not like Clive, who walks like he’s born to it, and that’s two different things). It’s like weird kind of dream, watching himself and Forsyth banter back and forth almost like they do in real life and hearing the audience laugh not because they’re embarrassed but because they’re actually finding it funny. Watching them play off Lukas almost exactly as they do at the house, at the dinner table or around the pool, but everything’s magnified ten times and they’re not people anymore, they’re _characters_.

Fernand hates the heist movie. He thinks it’s vulgar because the script was adapted from a pulp novel and not some thousand-year-old epic poem or noble deed in history. Python wants to tell Fernand that if he thinks moldy old material makes for uplifting pictures than he really oughta check out the foreign version of _A Thousand Snows_ , but Lukas beats him to it, and then things get nasty. 

One of the things Python’s noticed about Lukas is how he doesn’t throw words around, which does make him stand out in this town where nothing counts for shit including “I love you, baby” unless it’s in writing and notarized. Python’s grandma was the same way— always on him about how love and hate were close to sacred and how nobody should ever say that they _love_ pickles or _hate_ ice cream. Python wonders if in whatever nameless town Lukas hails from (and they’ve figured out it was someplace close to the northern border, even if nobody knows exactly where) he grew up with a similar kind of grandma, one who told him to measure out _love_ and _hate_ like his very soul depended on it. 

Fernand may or may not love Miss Clair, but he sure hates a lot of things these days, including Lukas. As for Lukas, if there’s anything on the planet he hates, it’s got to be Fernand. As for love… well, Python’s got a silent wager on that one, but no one’s taking him up on it. 

While he’s spending way too much time and effort cogitating over the mess going down at Deliverance, Python’s drifted back to some of his old haunts. He’s walking now past the soda fountain where he and Forsyth used to keep watch for celebrities. Python wonders if he should go inside for old times’ sake but a lime phosphate doesn’t really tickle his fancy at the moment. 

“It’s him, isn’t it? It’s HIM.” 

It takes a second before Python realizes the girl on the opposite side of the street means, well, _him_. Python. Python’s never been an all-capitals commodity before. 

Without completely thinking it through, he spins on one heel, snaps his finger and points to her with a wink. 

“I love you!” comes the shriek from across the street. 

“Love’s a four-letter-word, baby,” he calls back, and she dissolves into screams. As Python turns away he hopes he hasn’t earned himself a stalker. There’s no chance of going inside the soda fountain now, as he’ll be trapped, so he keeps walking, turns the corner, and hails a cab to get him out of there. 

-x- 

Another night of watching dailies at Chez Lukas. Another morning of reviving themselves with so many cups of coffee that Python is starting to believe there might actually be some harm in it. As he gnaws joylessly on some bread dipped in honey, the blind item column catches his eye. There are a couple of these in the local papers but this is the worst of them, the one that sketches out everything in such malicious detail that the Dear Reader has no doubt who’s in the hospital for "appendicitis" or “exhaustion" and what they did to land themselves there. This is a different kind of insinuation about a clash of personalities that’s threatening to tear a most ambitious venture apart. Python reads it twice over the way he does a script, once to get the high-level impression, and once to process every word to make sure his fatigued brain isn’t making a hash of it. 

“Check this out,” he says and slides the paper over to Forsyth. 

“If you’ve gotten in there again because of your nightclub antics, Python…” 

“It’s not me this time.” 

As he scans the column the expression on Forsyth’s interesting face goes from irritation to grave concern. 

“It’s Fernand and Lukas,” he says. 

“Yep.” 

-x- 

That blind-item leak of internal strife at Deliverance is like blood in the water. After that first trickle, reports of spats between Lukas and Fernand keep streaming into the papers, which happily credit their ginned-up rivalry over Miss Clair for the turmoil. Python knows what the two stars are fighting over and it ain't Miss Clair's affection, but everyone around him seems hellbent on staying blind to what's really going on as Fernand hisses threats against various parts of Lukas's well-insured person and Lukas makes pointed comments through a bland smile about Fernand's "affections" and "infatuations." 

"They've gotta tone that down a hair if they don't want the nice ladies who write blind-items really catching onto them," Python says to Forsyth after the latest of these spats ends in one dressing room door dramatically slammed and another quietly, firmly shut. "I don't think either of those two would enjoy the hassle." 

Forsyth pretends not to understand, either. Forsyth, who's been hiding his glossy magazines inside respectable books about as long as Python's known him. Forsyth, who had a pin-up of Clive inside his closet door back home. 

Python's learned to swim in a lot of social circles here in Tinseltown and he knows the clubs where men who keep pinups of Clive without shame or repentance like to drink and dance. He's been there dancing among them-- not _with_ them, not completely, because his own tastes are a little too broad and loose to fit in there or anywhere else and the other patrons have marked him for it-- and Python knows that the word many of these men use for themselves will never cross the lips of Forsyth, or Lukas, or Fernand. Doesn't mean the word doesn't fit as far as the general public’s concerned, and it sure doesn’t mean that somebody with a poison pen will balk at using it. It’s a career-killer like few other things are, a one-way ticket out of Tinseltown… but only if the press latches onto it. There are _open_ secrets and there are _public_ secrets and the difference between one and the other is what gets you run out of town. 

That’s what makes it all so damned stupid and hypocritical. Python doesn't think for a second the masses filling their fake temples and palaces for worship every matinee don't have the sophistication to pick up on what makes these Deliverance flicks so damn watchable. Out there in the dying heartland, the cashiered soldiers and bored small-town music teachers, the spinster librarians and unhappily married housewives maybe don't have the words to give a name to what's going on whenever Clive's sharing a screen with his dear, dear friends, but they can see it as surely as a former small-town bored boy like Python can. Miss Clair's always been the glitzy distraction in the center of the picture, the bauble put there by Tinseltown's gatekeepers to nudge everyone's thoughts along the path of the straight, narrow, and pure. The people running Tinseltown are both blind and idiots, because the audiences throwing their last silver coins at the silver screen can see with their own two eyes that Lukas yearns for Clive as fervently as the camera itself thirsts for the golden one. 

It's part of the whole rotten package they're peddling; the very thing that lights up the screen is unspoken and unspeakable, and it's impossible to look away. 

**To Be Continued**


	6. The Secret Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lukas goes off-script with the master plan to revitalize the fortunes of Deliverance.

With Miss Clair and Mathilda sidelined by Desaix’s legal dogs, Deliverance is having trouble keeping their commitment to ten pictures a year, and that’s with everyone working both documented overtime and the under-the-table kind that’s become the norm in spite of all the press releases about work rules and fair treatment.

It’s another blurry morning at Chez Lukas. Python has his head in his hands and doesn’t want to touch the cup of coffee at his elbow. He’s not complaining aloud, though, because Lukas is on the _chaise longue_ with a migraine. He tries to blame his inconsistent use of reading glasses whenever they strike but Python and Forsyth have both noticed the migraines hit with clockwork precision once a month and at this point they’ve entered a silent agreement to keep things as dark and as quiet as possible, so it’s out of order when Forsyth chokes on his own coffee in response to the front page of the newspaper.

“ _C’mon_ , Fors…”

Forsyth waves the paper around as he sputters and Python closes one eye to make sense of the bold screamer of a headline.

_Royal Productions Teams Up With Rigel Pictures_

Since the dawn of motion pictures, Royal and Rigel have been in some kind of non-compete agreement that probably isn’t legal, but the existence of Deliverance has up-ended the balance of everything and it looks like the deal is off and films from Rigel will be hitting the local market. They probably should’ve expected this, Python thinks as he scans the article, which is chock-full of quotes from that scumbag Desaix about what a glorious new day this alliance is going to be for the industry. Tinseltown is finally going to be graced by the films of the greatest star north of the border, it seems, and Python squints at the publicity photo of a pretty boy with dark good looks and the “smoldering” gaze that Fernand’s always trying to pull off.

“Hot new thing, eh?”

And Forsyth just snarls. It takes a few cups of coffee before he’s really himself in the mornings, these days.

-x-

Lukas already has a couple of reels from Rigel on hand, and once he’s feeling better he puts on a little show for them. Rigel’s films definitely have a “foreign” flavor to them though it’s not as jarring as that Empress Nyna movie. The contrast in the film stock is different, the way things are shot is different—“slick” is the word that comes to mind as Python watches. As for the actors, well…

Rigel’s hot new thing boasts a commanding voice to go with his boyish looks. His leading lady is pretty and looks like she might wilt or melt under Tinseltown’s sun. She’s a better dancer than she is an actress but she can definitely dance. As for the boy, he’s no mean dancer himself, and for all that Python’s hoping to see signs of a dub job during the songs, he comes away convinced that both of the lovebirds are using their own pipes.

“Yeah, he’s going to be a problem,” says Python at the close of one furious song-and-dance number.

“Berkut,” Forsyth sounds it out in disgust. “What kind of name is that?”

“The ‘k’ looks good on a marquee. Ask our pal Lukas.”

And he can act. Boy, can he act. He’s about a decade younger than Clive and could probably blow him off the screen given the chance.

“We are done, my friend. D-O-N-E done,” says Python.

-x-

Faced with the prospect of this triple-threat from north of the border, Clive has the sensible reaction of giving into panic. What he does next is something Python never would’ve imagined.

“My next assignment is to locate Sir Mycen and get him under contract,” says Lukas one sultry afternoon when the three of them are drinking by the pool, and he says it like this plan is something sane. Or even _possible_.

Forsyth and Python exchange an incredulous glance.

“How’s that?” asks Python as Forsyth tosses back another shot of whiskey.

Mycen’s a living legend in a way even Clive can’t touch. A generation ago he starred in the original of _The Four Riders_ and a dozen other things that set eight-reel feature films as the standard back when it was a free-for-all and movies could’ve gone in any direction. Mycen even got a knighthood for his contributions to culture back when that was a thing that happened. But he’d bailed out of town more than a decade before with a cloud of allegations over his head. Anything was possible in the silent days; the Tinseltown cops turned a blind eye when love triangles ended in bloody murder or inconvenient people died in convenient house fires. Mycen _probably_ didn't set any fires that killed anyone's bastard kids, but he’d sure made some enemies.

And now, Deliverance is pinning their hopes for survival on him, like the resurrection of an old man can somehow, some way, reverse all the damage that Desaix’s done to them.

-x-

They see Lukas off at the train station after a final hasty breakfast in an all-day diner of the type Python and Forsyth resorted to back when they were broke nobodies.

“D’you think he can pull it off? Bringing Mycen back into the limelight?” Python asks as he shoves one sad strip of bacon through his eggs so the yolks break and run over the toast.

“If anyone can close a deal like that, it’ll be Lukas,” says Forsyth.

“I don’t know, Fors. I mean, sure we feel that way, but Mycen’s an old pro. I bet he’s seen some pretty talkers in his time.” 

What Python really means is that old Mycen is not infatuated with the pretty little ginger and isn’t predisposed to go along with whatever he says. Then again, maybe Lukas is right to Mycen’s tastes— the old man never had an official lady friend the way most movie stars did. Maybe sending Lukas his way is a truly savvy move on Clive’s part.

Probably not.

“Lukas is…” And Forsyth finds himself tongue-tied the way that he gets when he tries to put what he _really_ feels about their perpetual host into words. “He’s a performer in ways we’ll never touch.”

“Yeah.”

“What I mean, Python, is that he’s never not playing a part.”

“Got that right,” says Python. The orange juice at this place is watered-down— talk about insult upon injury. “What do you think his deal is?”

"Well, I don't think it's criminal--"

“I was only joking about him coming off like a serial killer," says Python, even though that remains to him at least an outside possibility. For one thing, Lukas has basically taken on the role of the studio fixer, which is something neither of them is supposed to know about much less discuss over bad food in a cheapo diner. Maybe Lukas isn’t creating the bodies but he sure knows where and how to bury them. “You still gotta admit that he's hiding something.”

"If we were to wager on the answer…” Forsyth shreds the peel off an orange slice, then sets the ribbon of peel down with a sigh. “Well, I don't think his mother called him 'Lukas' any more than yours knows you as 'Python.'"

“Yeah.” That goes without saying, to Python’s mind. It goes for Python, and Lukas, and half the damned industry. “Well, everybody gets one chance to reinvent themselves in Tinseltown, don't they?”

“We do,” agrees Forsyth. He pops the piece of orange into his mouth and chews on it with a lot of noisy cow sounds. Forsyth always got in trouble for chewing gum in school because he never could manage to be discreet about it. “Nobody’s ever turned up his parents, or his teachers or any friends, or even so much as a photograph…”

“Covered his tracks nice and thorough. Maybe that does make him the guy to get Mycen out of hiding.”

-x-

Lukas sends a couple of telegrams and then drops out of communication entirely. Meanwhile, the lawsuits with Royal Productions and Desaix are taking their toll on Deliverance. Fernand’s gotten weird; when one of the blind-item columns says his behavior on the set’s become “erratic,” they’re being kind. His excuse is being upset over Mathilda and Clair, but in the privacy of the garage Forsyth agrees with Python that good old Fernand’s been trying to cozy up to Clive while Lukas is away and isn’t getting any satisfaction for his efforts. As for Clive, he’s started forgetting his lines for all that he can at least go home and console himself with Mathilda’s company even if he can’t share the screen with her right now. It’s not even that Royal and Desaix have a winning legal argument— they just have enough money to keep things tied up real good.

Forsyth comforts himself by taking his guild card out of his wallet and running his fingers again and again over the type that proclaims him a Principal Actor. If Deliverance shuts down he may never work in the business again, but Desaix and his allies at Rigel can’t take away from Forsyth that for one shining moment, he’s made it. Python’s got a card like that too, but he keeps it with the one from the carpenters’ guild because that may be their meal ticket going forward if Desaix prevails.

It feels like they’re on an island that’s about to sink beneath a rising sea, but they do what they can to keep the scripts coming in and the cameras rolling, because right now that’s all they’ve got. When Python intercepts the telegram announcing that Lukas is back in town with a surprise, there are cheers throughout the studio office… and Python is a little surprised at how relieved he is to hear from Lukas again. It’s not like he’s ever been the sentimental type.

-x-

"Is this the famous Sir Mycen? Looks like time out of the spotlight's taken forty years off him."

Kid can’t even be old enough order a beer. It turns out Lukas can't tempt Sir Mycen out of retirement, but he’s brought back Mycen’s grandson. Alm’s a nice healthy farm boy with a cute face and a surprising amount of confidence, but he’s not what they asked for, and the resulting blow-up between Fernand and Lukas over what Lukas was assigned to do and what he actually did is something nobody’s going to keep out of the papers. Python wishes he had some popcorn handy during the show. But Clive wades in to settle everyone down and he explains patiently to Fernand that yes, Lukas is going to have the chance to make one picture featuring Alm, the better to complete their ten-picture quota of feature films. And yes, Lukas gets to direct it.

This leaves Fernand so nobly out of joint that it almost warms the cockles of Python’s heart, but he doesn’t get to bask long in the glow of Fernand’s discontent; everybody’s got to get back to work.

As Python watches the dailies he thinks he’s starting to get how Clive’s dream of a different sort of studio is actually going to work. The movie Lukas is making with Alm and some other no-name kids couldn’t be more different from the Magic Sword Epics of yore or the slick musicals coming out of Rigel. Python guesses he’s seeing what Clive and Miss Clair and the rest mean when they talk about films "with heart”— films meant to uplift the masses during times of trouble and not just distract them for a couple of hours as the croplands bake into a sea of dust and war rages overseas. It’s just a winsome little picture about a small-town kid going off to the city and getting involved in something bigger than he’d imagined. No cast of thousands, no giant sets, no earth-shattering conflict. But the kids are amusing and Lukas is doing some interesting things with the camera, using the lighting and angles in ways Python hasn’t really seen before. By the time the reels of the low-stakes little picture have been stitched together it feels like a pretty big little picture— which is grand, because the future of Deliverance may be riding on it.

The “kid movie,” as Python thinks of it, strikes gold and they’re able to keep paying the lawyers and win a round against Desaix. Alm’s first turn on the screen effectively sets Miss Clair free to do a picture for the Deliverance with Alm as her new co-star. Fernand goes more “erratic” than ever over the idea of Miss Clair sharing screen with a bumpkin, even a pedigreed bumpkin, but the dailies prove that at long last Miss Clair has a leading man to match her mettle. The wide-eyed country boy gives the impression the glittering city girl is going to eat him alive, yet instead of succumbing without a fight he somehow converts her to being his own protective angel with no apparent effort. It actually entertains Python in a way Miss Clair’s onscreen romances have never moved him before, and Python doesn’t think it’s because he’s getting soft. Watching his own work lately hasn’t moved him, for damn certain. He’s moved past the stage of finding some kind of amazement in himself on he silver screen and now watching himself in the dailies leaves just Python feeling hard and sour, like an underripe lemon.

The Python projected on the screen is a character as surely as impeccable Clive and glamorous Mathilda are constructs of Tinseltown, and alone in the flickering dark of the projection room Python has to admit to himself that he, too, is one of those always playing a part. Maybe he always was and it just felt real. Maybe the people around him aren’t any more self-aware than he’s been, and everyone from Clive to Miss Clair to Lukas really thinks they’re the one authentic human being in a sea of phonies.

He’s got a bank account now, and there’s enough money in it that he could go to the racetrack and lay down something on a fast horse, or go to a casino and let fast women fawn over him. He could hit Jesse’s cabaret and buy everyone a round and let the gang there fawn over him. He just doesn’t feel like it. He doesn’t feel like anything.

"I'm sick of oranges," he says to himself as he stares at the monochrome fruit bowl set out for his pleasure.

Oranges will be their last meal before everyone starves.

**To Be Continued**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference to a "k" looking good on a marquee is a reference to a tale about Citizen Kane I haven't been able to verify-- that one of its working titles was Citizen Craig and the head of RKO thought "Kane" looked better on a marquee.


	7. Crimson Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deliverance hits its stride and makes some real profits thanks to its new young star, but a new picture-house in town presents a stiff challenge. Then again, when isn't there a crisis going down?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of y'all have guessed what's going on with a major character, but since it's dealt with in this chapter I just have to say that just because this is set in not!Hollywood doesn't mean everyone's especially enlightened.

Alm brings to Tinseltown an entourage of his very own, a trio of fellow farmboys and a tiny girl with hair like spun flax and large gooey eyes. The girl is fed immediately to the star-making machine, which touts her as the nation's new sweetheart, wholesome and healthy and as good for the public's palate as a bowl of toasted cereal. Deliverance really isn’t any better than Royal or Rigel when it comes to that kind of crap. Reading about whether or not Alm's heart has been captured by Sweet Faye or Miss Clair is vomit-inducing to Python, but it sure sells magazines and that in turn keeps the money-machine spinning at Deliverance.

And spin it does. One thing Python notices after Lukas gets back from his “mission” is that Lukas isn’t turning in at anything resembling a reasonable hour anymore. The typewriter’s rat-a-tat fires through the night as Lukas burns through what must be every cup of coffee left in Tinseltown to make his deadlines.

Python might join Lukas in an all-nighter to help him out. Once or twice, anyway. It hardly seems worth it.

-x-

The Alm-and-Clair matchup is another hit. A big one. The kind that prints money.

It also proves the final straw for Fernand. That Clive, the golden one, the knight of the silver screen, would take a _supporting role_ in a picture with the bumpkin prince is too much for Fernand to bear, and since Fernand doesn’t care about such low-class things as whether or not Deliverance is in the red, he bails out after one final shouting match with Lukas. Python misses the fireworks, which is just too bad as he’d have loved to see that particular exit.

Python wishes even more that he could’ve seen Fernand’s reaction when Lukas gets nominated for a major award for directing that flick. Since he wasn’t, he plans his own celebration for the evening, luring his friends to Jesse’s on the grounds that cabaret night there is a can’t miss. It’s not like he’s tricking them, because Forsyth and Lukas both know what the game is there at Jesse’s, at least in a broad sense. It’s up to Python to explain the nuances to them.

“So the blond guy with his shirt open is _the_ Jesse. Loves life and sees beauty in everything, by which I mean he’ll hit on everyone and doesn’t mean anything bad by it. It’s his way of saying hi.”

“Ah,” says Lukas. He sounds like none of this is surprising.

“That’s Sonya. She’s the night manager and the only regular dame you’ll ever see in this place, and by regular I mean those assets on her chest are from nature and not modern science or technology or whatever.” Sonya, being not susceptible to the charms of the clientele at Jesse’s, was generally in charge of evicting bad patrons but Python figured Lukas and Forsyth were low-risk in that department and didn’t need the full explanation. “Jasmine and Paula over there are two of the singers here. Jasmine is always Jasmine even when she takes off the wig, but Paula switches into Paul when the show’s over and don’t get the two of them mixed up because that’ll get you kicked out of here.”

“They’re… identical?” asks Forsyth.

“Yeah, brothers. And that pretty little thing in the corner is Leon. Don’t confuse him with one of the ladies no matter how many you’ve had or he’ll scratch your eyes out. I think he finally got a contract over at Seraphim or one of the other small-time studios because he’s had more money to spend lately.”

Jesse comes over and shows his appreciation for the patronage of Forsyth and Lukas by hitting on both of them and that sets the tone for the night. Lukas isn’t exactly riding high on the breeze of that award nomination; Fernand’s public antics have loosened his tongue and alcohol sharpens it further. Python’s not worried, as a joint like Jesse’s, where confidentiality comes with the cover charge, is the safest place in town to unload on everything. Besides, acid words delivered in that creamy voice delights Python more than any rum-laced concoction in his glass.

“Hey, Luke. When you’re saying things like that it makes me want to kiss you.”

“Oh. Why don’t you, then?”

No one minds and no one’s going to tell. Okay, maybe Forsyth minds. Python hears a little sound of distress across the table and he doesn’t know if Forsyth’s scared that everyone’s cover is about to be blown or jealous that he’s not getting a piece of it. No way in hell is he turning down the opportunity, though, so within seconds Python is creeping his hand along Lukas’s trouser seam— cautiously, because he knows Lukas is capable of beating the snot out of someone half a head taller than he is and sometimes people change their minds…

“Go on,” says Lukas, in the moment when their noses are almost touching.

Lukas tastes about as good as Python expected, which means right now he tastes of rum and lime and brown sugar. Python’s hand inches up a little more, a little more, and in the moment he places his hand right dead center on Lukas, things get weird. Python’s eyes flick open and he’s looking into Lukas’s eyes under those perfect dark lashes and sees something that isn’t fear or defiance or anything Python can put a name to.

Lukas barely even moves his lips.

“You spoke of the difference between nature and technology…”

“S’okay, Luke. We’re all on the same team.” Python shuts his eyes and goes back to kissing Lukas as he cops a solid feel. When he comes up for air Python says, so there’s no misunderstanding, “Hey, stud… you’re perfect. And I ain’t perfect but I sure am versatile. Whatever strikes your fancy, I’m up for it.”

Python knew what he was when he let Forsyth convince him to go seeking fame, fortune, sunshine, and oranges. He’s got no doubts that Lukas knew exactly what he was doing when he left whatever name his mother gave him behind in some backwater by the border and set out for Tinseltown.

-x-

It doesn’t get beyond kissing and nuzzling with Lukas that night, mostly because of Forsyth, who radiates white-knuckled terror the rest of the show and insists that they leave once Paula and Jasmine flounce off the stage, even though Jesse would’ve happily arranged for an only slightly sordid private room for his patrons’ pleasure.

“Fors, you already guessed what was going on,” Python says once they’ve seen Lukas off to bed and retreated into their space above the garage. “Don’t fall apart at the seams just because you know what you pretty much already knew.”

“That’s not the problem,” says Forsyth, but for once all his erudition can’t get him to say what the problem actually is.

“Relax. They’re not going to burn Lukas at the stake for this. If anything, he’s going to get a pass on making eyes at Clive, because everybody’s going to convince themselves he’s a fun-time girl who likes to dress up in boys’ clothes for kicks and needs to find his own Clive to make a proper lady out of him.”

“That’s not right!” 

The mortal offense in Forsyth’s voice makes Python hold up his hands in immediate surrender.

“I know that and you know that but don’t expect the daily rags to make sense of it. You know a story like this comes up every couple of years— wasn’t there that tennis player who got found out during a physical right before some big competition, and before that some society photographer who got into a weird scene with a radio star and tried to steal his fiancee or something like that? The papers always play it the same way, bold girls trying to make their way in a man’s world or whatever. They almost find it funny.”

“There’s nothing funny about any of this.”

“I’m not laughing, Fors.”

“Python, regardless of what we already did or didn’t figure out… look, _Clive doesn’t know_.”

“Yeah, Clive and his lady might be a little put out.” Forsyth doesn’t have to explain that Clive and Mathilda aren’t the kind of people who might turn up at Jesse’s to enjoy some cabaret. Hell, they might view it through the same lens as the papers, in one flash inverting the image of Lukas from Clive’s faithful pillar into some kind of perverse home-wrecker.

“But I think that Fernand might,” adds Forsyth.

“Ugh.” Python has to admit that Fernand’s machinations are so clumsy that he’s gotten used to underestimating the resident traitor and maybe lost sight of Fernand’s own brand of cunning. Being clumsy doesn't mean he can’t do them some damage. “That’s a problem.” 

-x-

And yet nothing much happens, not in Tinseltown anyway. Out in the wide world bad things are going down and the papers are calling it the Popcorn Riots. As corn gets scarce, the movie palaces of the heartland have to raise prices on a sack of popcorn, and all the nobodies who depend on movie palace popcorn to keep their bellies full on buttery fluff get sent deeper into the hole. Meanwhile the war that's been simmering overseas for longer than Python and Forsyth have been trying to make it in pictures has gotten so bad that refugees are turning up on the east coast, fleeing the frying pan only to land in a dust pan.

"Seraphim Studios has signed a trio of beautiful sisters from the exotic land of Macedon."

Seraphim's been spending money like mad. They’re an offbeat kind of movie house that does the lowbrow version of the magic sword spectacles— adventure yarns set in jungles, on ships, in the desert. Most of their actors are fresh faces plus a couple of has-beens on their second chance, which means they can operate on the cheap compared with Deliverance. Cheap isn’t free, though, and as Python observes their hiring spree he has a couple of questions about it.

“So where’s Seraphim getting their money from?”

“They appear to be funded by a church,” replies Lukas.

“I thought churches and Tinseltown were mortal enemies.”

“This town makes for strange bedfellows, wouldn’t you say?” says Lukas, and Python can’t say anything against that, can he?

-x-

Seraphim's made just the sort of swashbuckling epic that Deliverance Studios has been backing away from, a sword-and-sorcery romp with two novelties-- it mixes up magic and monsters with pirates on the high sea, and the main character is a plucky heroine with a jeweled dagger in one hand and a prayer-book in the other. The word is that the test screening audiences couldn't get enough of it and the red-haired girl in the poster— Cecilia or Cecille or something like that— is going to be the next first-magnitude star in town. Python hopes Miss Clair and Sweet Faye will survive their disappointment. 

Seraphim’s kind enough to grant a bunch of the Deliverance crew passes to the big premiere of _Crimson Angel_. The passes are accompanied by a stern note saying no one will be admitted during the terrifying sequence wherein the heroine faces a “Necrodragon,” and Python wonders what copywriter came up with that atrocity.

It’s almost dull by now, sitting in the back of the limousine with Forsyth, watching the crowd around the Castle Theatre. It’s not even dark but the Castle is ablaze with colored lights, almost like the fake parapets are under assault from some kind of magic fire. Maybe that’ll get people in the right mood for the show. Python’s just not feeling it all tonight. A glimpse of the red-haired little star and her one-eyed bodyguard just makes him wonder if Cecille or whatever is having an affair with an impresario twice her age. He wouldn't be surprised by anything in this town.

Even the riot doesn’t surprise him. Nobody knows how it started. Lukas says that that Alm encountered Celica out on the Castle’s balcony, and words were exchanged, and the pair of young stars went so far as to embrace one another… whereupon the crowd below erupted into full-on hysterical madness. After the police have cracked heads down in the streets and the ambulances have carried casualties away, everyone representing Deliverance is safe and sound inside the Castle and the show, of course, will go on as planned.

Oranges are scattered all over the mezzanine carpet. Python retrieves one.

“And this, the golden apple of discord,” he says and tosses it to Forsyth.

Forsyth catches it with one hand and stares at it mournfully. 

“What the hell just happened, Python?”

“Does it even matter?”

And Forsyth shuts his mouth as he realizes that it doesn’t, that it can’t, that nothing adds up and nothing makes sense. Python loops his arm inside Forsyth’s and escorts him toward the gilded doors of the actual theater. The discarded orange rolls away across the bright birds and flowers of the luxuriant carpet and Python and Forsyth march together toward whatever future Seraphim and its Necrodragon are serving up to them.

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The riot is inspired by the one at the end of Day of the Locust, which was allegedly inspired by the one at the premiere of Hell's Angels.


End file.
